Persian · Dessert
Sholeh Zard
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 4 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a floral thread lifting the aroma, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 200 g short-grain pudding rice
- 2 L water
- 2 g salt
- 400 g caster sugar
- 100 g unsalted butter
- 1 g saffron threads, ground and steeped in 60 ml hot water
- 60 ml rosewater
- 60 g slivered almonds
- 30 g pistachios, finely chopped
- 5 g ground cinnamon
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · nuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rinse the rice, then simmer it uncovered in the water with the salt, stirring now and then, until the grains have burst and there is no bite left at all, about 50 minutes. 50 min
- Only now stir in the sugar and butter; the pot will slacken and go soupy before it thickens again over the next 25 minutes. 25 min
- Add the saffron and its water and cook on until a spoon dragged across the base leaves a track that closes slowly.
- Off the heat, stir through the rosewater and the almonds.
- Pour into shallow dishes while still loose and leave to cool to room temperature, then pattern the tops with cinnamon and pistachio.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Reducing a sauce 95 recipes
- A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
- Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
- Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
- Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.
Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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